How connected are you?

[onlymark]

At the end of January 2008 the Captain of a ship, allegedly not far off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt decided, for whatever reason, to drop his anchor.
Unfortunately he scored a bullseye on the 39,000km long cable that connected Germany to South Korea and provided the internet for many countries along the way. Including me.
For several weeks I was without the internet, as apparently was millions of others. It affected 75% of the access in Asia.

I'd forgotten mostly about it until a recent news report stated there was damage again to this cable and it was affecting internet speeds in Egypt.
So I looked into it a bit and I found this interesting (to me anyway) graphic composed a few days after the original event.

It also shows the spaghetti of other internet cables strewn across the sea bed and it got me thinking about who you are actually connected to, in more ways than one.

cs.senecac.on.ca/~selmys/subjects/ops335-083/SeaCableHi.jpg

[Deleted]

Amazing map. I wonder how they manage to lay all those cables down so deep below the sea level, it can't be an easy task.

For several weeks I was without the internet, as apparently was millions of others. It affected 75% of the access in Asia.



I had not heard of this before. I wonder how it must have affected the business world in the places that were without cable? Whatever did you do without it?

[onlymark]

There is an older cable that gave a sporadic and slower connection but it was far from good. How it affected the businesses I can't really say. I suppose it was quite difficult for those that relied on it. But I think those that did would be less in proportion to if it was Europe or the USA that was affected.

[spindrift]

I had heard about under-the-sea internet cables. There was a news report, not long ago, about secrecy surrounding the exact location of the (an) underwater cable from England to somewhere, perhaps it was France, or perhaps it was the USA.

Not very high tech is it?

[onlymark]

High tech or not, unless you connect via a satellite I suppose it's the best we can do for now. Maybe in the future we can all have our own little satellites flying around in outer space with our own personal connection.

I suppose that the technique for laying them is just to get a great big roll of it and play it out over the back of your boat. A bit like fishing but it then sinks to the bottom and just sort of lies there.

[Deleted]

Apr 26, 2010 0:14:13 GMT deyana said:

I wonder how it must have affected the business world in the places that were without cable? Whatever did you do without it?

The business world is so hooked on these cables that the first commercial cable was laid in 1851. By 1852, they laid a direct cable from London to Paris so that stock market orders could be transmitted in less than one hour, as opposed to 3 days previously. Money makes the world go round (the world go round, the world go round....).